Monuments Now
15 September 2010

Unique, information-rich, digital, and accessible to all

Since the end of the Second World War,
its events have been commemorated in a constant succession of new
ways. Today, 65 years later, the Jewish Historical Museum and the
Hollandsche Schouwburg are opening the gates to the future with
three exceptional, innovative projects that provide digital access
to the past. On 15 September these projects will be presented at
the Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam.

Jewish Monument Community

A unique social network centred on the
ShoahWith more than 250,000 pages of information about Jewish
victims of the Shoah, the Digital Monument to the Jewish Community
in the Netherlands is a treasured place of commemoration. It has
now become the centre of the interactive Jewish Monument Community,
a social network of the victims' family members, neighbours, and
classmates, as well as researchers and students. On the website,
anyone can look up or contribute facts, photographs, stories, and
memories about the victims of the Shoah, building bridges between
the postwar generations and their forebears. The result is a living
community where the past and present meet. The Jewish
Monument Community is open to everyone.

ikPod

Two monuments mergeAt the Hollandsche
Schouwburg there is a wall of names, with all 6,700 family
names of the Jews from the Netherlands who were murdered during the
German occupation. The
ikPod, an iPod specially adapted by Mediamatic, links the names
on the wall to all the available information about all family
members on the Digital Monument website. Visitors can read the
names on the wall with the ikPod to learn the individual histories
behind them. Visitors to the wall of names can now see information
about family situations, addresses, and occupations, supplemented
with personal stories and more than 10,000 photographs and
documents. This makes the monument interactive and meets the
growing need for individual commemoration, in a fitting, dignified
manner.

Two Thousand Witnesses Tell Their Stories

5,000 hours of life stories from the Shoah Visual
History Archive, now available to visitorsWith the help of 70 summarizers, the Jewish Historical
Museum has made 2,000 eyewitness testimonies from the Visual
History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute in Los
Angeles fully searchable. This is the largest oral history archive
on the Shoah in the Netherlands and can now be searched in its
entirety. The complete archive, assembled on the initiative of
Steven Spielberg, consists of nearly 52,000 interviews with
survivors of and eyewitnesses to the Shoah from all over the world.
From this archive, the Jewish Historical Museum selected 2,000
interviews related to the Netherlands. The interviews can be viewed
in the Hollandsche Schouwburg and the Jewish Historical Museum. For
an
impression of the interviews visit the Resource Centre
online.

Program Monuments Now 15 September 2010:

14.30 uur Doors open
15.00 uur Words of welcome from Joël
Cahen, director of the Jewish Historical Museum (JHM) and the
Hollandsche Schouwburg.
15.05 uur Speakers
- Ed van Thijn,
former mayor of Amsterdam
- Stephen
Smith, director of the USC Shoah Foundation
Institute (o.v.b.).
- Introduction to the
three projects in words and images by Lonnie
Stegink (head of the Resource Centre, JHM).
- Round
table with members of the Jewish Monument Community, led
by the journalist Leonard
Ornstein.
- Willem
Velthoven, chairman of the non-profit organization
Mediamatic, who will discuss the ikPod.
15.45 uur Closing words by Joël
Cahen.
A reception will follow, with opportunities to view the testimonies
in Two Thousand Eyewitnesses Speak, try out the ikPod, and
sign up for the Jewish Monument Community.
17.00 uur End of presentation

Hollandsche Schouwburg
Plantage Middenlaan 24
1001 RE Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Open daily from 11.00 to 16.00www.hollandscheschouwburg.nlYou can take metro line 51 or 54 to Waterlooplein, a
five-minute walk from the museum, or tram 9 or 14 to Plantage
Kerklaan.

The Hollandsche Schouwburg is one of the most important Dutch
monuments commemorating the persecution of the Jews. In 1942 and
1943, thousands of Jewish men, women, and children were rounded up
there to be deported. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews, out of a total
population of 140,000, were murdered in concentration and
extermination camps.